OpenAI loses a top data center exec, as stream of high-profile departures continues
OpenAI has lost Chris Malone, its head of data centres, who departed last week, according to the Wall Street Journal. His exit is notable given the critical, high-profile nature of the role amid the AI industry's massive infrastructure buildout, and it adds to a run of more than a dozen senior departures from the company this year, raising questions about internal stability even as OpenAI races to expand its computing capacity.
Malone, who previously spent nearly five years at Meta and over a decade at Google, had only joined OpenAI in March last year, shortly after the launch of the $500 billion Stargate Project, a US data centre initiative backed by the Trump administration involving OpenAI, Oracle, Nvidia, SoftBank and Microsoft. OpenAI said it had reorganised its infrastructure organisation, with Malone having recently begun reporting to vice president Sachin Katti instead of president Greg Brockman; the data centre remit is now split among executives including Uday Ruddarraju, Brent Mayo and Spas Lazarov. Malone's departure follows other high-level exits this year, including chief revenue officer Denise Dresser, longtime COO Brad Lightcap, product and business chief Fidji Simo, and head of ethics Chloé Bakalar, alongside reports that OpenAI has disbanded its AI safety "preparedness" team.
- OpenAI's data centre chief Chris Malone left after just 17 months
- His exit follows over a dozen senior OpenAI departures in 2026
- OpenAI cites an infrastructure reorganisation under VP Sachin Katti
New here? Start with this
OpenAI has been losing senior executives at a striking rate this year, with more than a dozen high-profile departures so far, including its chief operating officer, chief revenue officer, and its head of ethics. This pattern has prompted questions about stability inside the company at a time when it is under huge pressure to scale up rapidly, both technically and commercially, as competition in artificial intelligence intensifies.
The latest to leave is Chris Malone, who ran OpenAI's data centre operations, a role central to the company's ability to build the physical computing power its AI systems depend on. He joined only in March last year, arriving from senior roles at Meta and Google, shortly after OpenAI helped launch the Stargate Project, a $500 billion US data centre initiative also involving Oracle, Nvidia, SoftBank and Microsoft, with backing from the Trump administration.
Data centres matter because AI models require enormous amounts of computing capacity to run, and companies like OpenAI are racing to build and secure that infrastructure. Changes in leadership over this area, alongside OpenAI's wider reshuffling of its infrastructure team, are being watched closely as a signal of how the company is managing both its rapid growth and its internal organisation.
Both sides, in good faith
The strongest fair case each way — we don't pick a winner.
The case for
There is a reasonable case that this pattern of departures signals genuine turbulence at OpenAI: losing a head of data centres barely a year into the role, amid a run of more than a dozen senior exits including a COO, a chief revenue officer and the head of ethics, plus the reported disbanding of the safety preparedness team, is the kind of churn that would concern any observer of a company undertaking a $500 billion infrastructure build-out. Advocates of this reading would argue that stability in leadership matters enormously when execution risk is this high, and that repeated exits at the top, regardless of individual explanations, are a legitimate signal worth scrutinising rather than dismissing.
The case against
Equally, there is a reasonable case that this is unremarkable, even healthy, organisational evolution rather than evidence of dysfunction. OpenAI has grown explosively and reorganised its infrastructure function accordingly, splitting Malone's remit among several executives and shifting reporting lines to a vice president; such restructuring often prompts individual departures for personal or career reasons unrelated to any underlying trouble, and Malone himself arrived with a strong external pedigree that would make him attractive elsewhere regardless of internal conditions. Advocates of this reading would caution against over-interpreting a handful of departures at a company scaling as fast as OpenAI, where senior leadership turnover is common and does not by itself indicate instability.